1. Overheard in a Grand Central Station tunnel: “A woman scorned… she can be nasty, man.”

“Oh boy. You make a woman mad, that’s the end of it.”

Chuckling. (Gently.)

2. Seen on elevator news screen (more or less): “Test shows that the part of the brain that signifies anger is far less active when the person angered is lying down.” [The actual test, I discovered later, had to do with the brain’s response to insult and was conducted at Texas A& M University by a team led by Eddie Harmon-Jones.]

Analysis

The first point is one I’ve trying to impress on my husband for some time. Luckily, my very sweet husband, like the men underground (who really did smile, laugh, and ruefully shake their heads), usually seems to get it. That is—and I don’t mean to sound sexist here—that anger is sometimes to be expected (and accepted) in a wife.

(Just a note, the scorn the men seemed to be talking about was not the bitterness of unrequited love, so much as the irritation of unappreciated labor.)

Women do an awfully lot these days, what with many serving both as a significant, if not primary, wage earner, as well as chief cook and bottlewasher. A little frustration now and again should be seen as par for the course.

Which brings me to point 2.

“I’m not going to take that lying down,” appears, in the light of this study, to be an exceedingly poor method of resolving arguments. Especially for married couples.

Maybe, given applicable brain patterns, arguments between partners should be scheduled for bed, or at least, by mutual agreement, immediately moved to a prone position.

I’m not really sure I needed a cognitive scientist to tell me that this strategy would likely lead to prompter conflict resolution. Still, it’s always nice to know more of what makes the brain (ahem) light up.